Ashes To Ashes
by SasukeBlade
Summary: He was a boy, once, before he was a god. Raem-centric in the weirdest way possible, through the memories of things he can no longer have.


_Sometimes I get bored and I want to write. Sometimes I just want to write really, really weird things like this._

* * *

There were flowers on the kitchen table.

The little boy stared. Flowers made no difference to him, whether plucked from a garden or from the ground. Mama adored flowers, but Papa had taken her away from here and she could not see them.

Papa walked in the house, boots clomping heavily on the wooden floors as he tried not to glance at the flowers, at his son. He'd had enough of condolences. They did not save his beloved wife.

"Papa?" the little boy asked, walking over to tug on his father's shirtsleeves. "Papa, when's Mama comin' back?"

How could he explain death to a five year old? The healer tried, but the child had only turned away from the gruff but well meaning man in robes. The neighbor's wife had spoken with him, but he'd only shook his head. The elder had stopped him one day to offer condolences, but nothing could shatter his belief.

How could he break his son's heart?

"Papa?" the boy asked again, his tugging more insistent.

At last, the man knelt beside his child and took the boy's face in his hands. "Son, ye listen to me now, and ye listen good. Yer Mama ain't comin' back."

"Mama left?" there was more confusion than hurt in that simple question, but the father knew that would soon reverse itself.

"No, son," he said. "Mama died. Do you know what that means?"

Wide brown eyes filled with tears as he watched his boy shake his head no.

"It means she won't be comin' back. Not ever. She's gone, lad."

* * *

He was a boy, once, before he was a god.

Long ago, when the gods and their avatars walked the earth and regularly interfered with their subjects' lives. Long ago, when kings were not necessary and there was no magicite, only the great crystals of the elements.

He was a boy, once, but he simply cannot remember.

He craves what these people have, what he once had. He cannot go back. He cannot change who he is. But he can take parts of them with him.

* * *

She waited at the bridge, hand clutched tight to the fabric of her dress, _knowing _that today was the day. Alex would be home today. He just had to be.

The healer had long since given up hope of convincing her to remain home, to stay in bed. She pressed a hand to her belly, conforming it along the rounded curve, no longer so surprised at the baby's occasional kicks. "He'll be home soon," she promised that tiny, sleeping mind.

Dusk fell, and with a sigh she rose from her seat on a nearby rock. One hand bracing her back, she waddled home to the empty, dark house and her empty, dark bed.

"Just wait a little longer," she said to the baby that night, but really, she was saying it to herself.

* * *

He was a man, once, before he was a god.

He was a strong man, a powerful man. He could not be slain. Often another man would vanquish him, and stand celebrating his defeat, only to watch in horror as this unstoppable warrior rose again and again, until his opponent fell beneath his blade.

He was a man, once, before a blow to the head took his memories.

The healers tried to help him, but some things are simply too lost to ever be regained.

* * *

Deep in the grove of trees, the only light she could find was cast by the full moon above.

He came to her there, slipped a ring onto her finger, made a promise. He laid with her beneath the trees, tracing patterns in the stars with a hand holding hers, whispered half remembered words of songs and poems.

They carved their initials into a tree trunk. A year later, when she wandered there instead of down to the square for his handfasting ceremony to the miller's eldest, she took her belt knife and scratched the initials out.

* * *

He was a mortal, once, before he was a god.

There was no deeper pain than the loss of his mind, aided by the loss of his memories so many years before. An identity is a powerful thing, and he begged the gods to have mercy.

He was a mortal, once, before the gods gave him a task and a way to live forever.

He was to hold tight to every memory, to preserve them, an ancient archivist. When a person passed, he was to then swallow the memories and advocate for that soul in the death god's court.

Power is a strong temptation to some, but to live again, some would pay any price.

* * *

Two children in a stream, splashing. Two children running through fields of crops. Two children climbing trees and picking fruit. Two children alive, healthy, whole.

Two young men in a stream, swimming. Two young men tending fields of crops. Two young men practicing with wooden blades. Two young men, alive, healthy, whole.

Two men in a miasma stream, straining. Two men fighting through a battlefield. Two men sharing a fire and a pot of stew. Two men, alive, healthy, whole.

One held the other's hand as he passed, then gently closed his eyes, that his friend might not see him weep.

* * *

He was a demigod, once, before he was a god.

All of life turns on fortune's wheel, and so the reign of the gods and later men ended. He and another remained, two so innocuous that they were left to themselves in a world beyond the miasma. Other remnants of their golden era-the elemental hotspots, the carbuncles, the Yukes-had long since forgotten that golden age.

He was a demigod, once, but now he rules as a god.

The memories are so sweet, so bitter, so full and raging with life that at first he only sips them. But like a man with too much of a taste for alcohol, soon the temptation is too strong. He gulps the memories, then downs them, then drowns in them. He is insatiable. He takes more than can be given and takes certain, sick, fierce joy in experiencing moments of lives that will never be his.

* * *

He is taking their memories so fast he can taste them in the making.

In their eyes he is a man no longer, only a great and terrible albatross with wings that stretch from one end of this world to the other. There is not much in their minds to sup, and in a rage he flings the preacher to one side and the knight to the other.

Then, as the knight stands, a flash. A small Lilty boy stares up at him, spear in hand, and the outpouring of love attached to it is so sweet he nearly licks the lips he no longer has. The preacher follows, and the contrast of his normal tranquility and his present fear is meant for a far more delicate palate than his.

Raem looms over Tida's caravan and smiles. Their memories, few as they may be, will be _so_ delicious.

He was a boy, and a man, and a mortal, and a demigod once, but he can no longer remember, and so he can no longer care.


End file.
